1. Field of the Invention
The invention lies in the field of electronic communications. The invention relates to a distributed MAC protocol facilitating collaborative ranging in communications networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Precision location based on peer-to-peer ranging is a desirable attribute in various communications networks. Traditionally, round-trip time based range measurement is accomplished with a pair-wise MAC procedure (in other words, for one device to communicate with another device, the nodes have to perform a handshake process). To resolve the round-trip time, what is currently required is a round trip communication using unicast communications through a modified Request-to-Send/Clear-to-Send (RTS/CTS) to obtain time stamps from a remote node. However, a large number of rounds of communications is associated with such a procedure when applied to a network-wide ranging. This substantial communication overhead is axiomatic when considering a large and densely deployed network.